Jack is a handsome and lascivious Harvard graduate with business and law degrees who imagines himself the love-child of JFK. He has the character of a real politico: charm, wide popularity, contempt for rights and feelings of others, an easily downward sliding zipper, no scruples or beliefs, the ability to always give answers that please, and devout cowardice. Dimitri, the narrator, is a Russian agent in the United States who works for the mysterious Peter in Russia. Pulling the strings through Dimitri, Peter attempts to dupe Jack into serving as one of his communist agents. He plans for Jack to rise through the political ranks from local positions to governor, senator, and then President of the United States.

The scheme falls into place, but it does not take long before pieces of it go awry. Peter has problems in Russia and the money dries up. Jack gets involved with organized crime, his lustful libido provides fodder for blackmail, and a long-ago one-night affair comes back to do him in - literally.

Connecting Trail: Political Intrigue

The Tears of Autumnby Charles McCarry – Secret agent Paul Christopher has to determine who arranged the assassination of JFK – hopefully without destroying the legend of the dead president and US foreign policy.

Shelley’s Heartby Charles McCarry – A presidential election is stolen through computer fraud and the life-long friendship of political rivals is at stake.

The Fools in Town Are on Our Sideby Ross Thomas – While dealing with the unexpected death of a Chinese double-agent, Lucifer Dye and Victor Orcutt face the difficulties of Orcutt’s First Law: “To get better, it must get much worse.”

Connecting Trail: Sinister Connection to Money

The Force by Don Winslow – Danny Malone who is known to all as the toughest, bravest defender of society is really a dirty cop. This recent hit will surely keep you on the edge of your seat while reading.

Rather Be the Devilby Ian Rankin – Rebus comes out of retirement to work with his old Edinburgh police colleagues in uncovering the financial chicanery behind the savage beating of an up-start gangster.

Metzger’s Dog by Thomas Perry – Veteran CIA agent Porterfield - with the help of Dr. Henry Metzger, a cat - determines who carried out a raid to steal top secret agency reports.

Twilight at Mac’s Placeby Ross Thomas – The death of an aged spy prompts a race for control of his memoirs – for money, of course…

The Procane Chronicle by Ross Thomas – The greatest thief in the world is in trouble. The greatest go-between in the world finds himself involved in murder and a major heist while trying to help.

Secondary Path: Scamming Funnymen

Chinaman’s Chance by Ross Thomas – Meet Artie Wu and Quincy Durant in the story of a buried fortune scam involving the mafia, a rogue CIA agent, and the “most corrupt little town west of Las Vegas

Out on The Rimby Ross Thomas – When the delivery of a Philippine terrorist for a $5M ransom is at stake, international fixers Wu, pretender to the throne of China, and the volatile Durant answer the call – to serve their own ends.

Voodoo Ltd by Ross Thomas – Wu and Durant’s company is known as Voodoo Ltd. The name is apt for this tale of a con job with returning characters that will surely entertain and make you laugh with quick one-liners.

Final Trails: Killers for Hire

The Butcher’s Boy by Thomas Perry – A professional killer, who never uses his name, is hired to assassinate a sitting senator in this Edgar Award winner.

Trace by Archer Mayor – Three parallel, tension-filled cases in three northeastern states seem, at first, to have simple resolutions, but all end up looking eerily like pro hits.

Kill the Next One by Federico Axat – Ted McKay is hired to kill two men who deserve to die. The terms of the engagement, however, are most unusual.

VOL. II. by Diana Hambleton

Life through the trees...

The Main Trail: A Pulitzer Prize winner's first novel in 14 years...

Driving through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx came across a sign she never forgot: “on this site stood the greatest pine forest the world has ever known.” Twenty-five years later, her novel, Barkskins, pays tribute to the fallen hero in a three century North American epic about man’s relationship with trees.

The novel begins with two indentured woodsmen who arrive in New France at the end of the seventeenth century. Each responds differently to the wilderness of “evergreens taller than cathedrals”, the “leaf-choked branches” that merge into a “dark and savage” sky.

For Charles Duke, alias Duquet--self-made, shrewd, and chillingly narcissistic--the forest is all about balancing risk with yield. Hustling between Penobscot Bay and Amsterdam, China and Boston, he builds a lumber empire, shamelessly exploited by subsequent generations for the latest “tree opportunity”—paper, plywood, fiberboard, rare woods.

In contrast, Rene Sels, has a feel for trees and develops into a skilled woodsman. Even though his work involves interminable cutting, lifting and stacking—the constant of biting insects and sweat stung eyes—he enjoys the rhythm of chopping and is perpetually engaged in a “forest dance.” Ditto for the sons, grandsons, and great grandsons that follow him.

But whereas the Duke family benefits financially from timber, the offspring of Rene and Mari, a Mi’kmaq, are metis--part French, part Indian--and suffer from severe discrimination--starvation, unemployment, white man’s diseases and, as recently as 1967, the Canadian residential school system where thousands of aboriginal children either died or were physically or emotionally abused.

This is a long novel—700 pages--but worth the effort: Not just for the dramatic plot and characters (some whisked to jarring deaths before fully flushed out); nor for the author’s grasp of natural science, anthropology and business history; nor her poetic images: the moon receded “like the hand of someone waving goodbye on a ferry.”

No, Barkskins is important because it explores why bad things happen to good people—and good environments—generation after generation. Whereas the Mi’kmaq live respectfully off the gifts of the forest, the European settlers use it ruthlessly as a means to an end: clearing it for farmland, chopping it up for profit. Immensely satisfying, the novel’s end game places the future of trees not just with the educated few, but also with North America’s “first people,” longtime guardians of the natural world.

Connecting Trail: Early North American Settlers

CHANGES IN THE LAND: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England by William Cronon (Hill and Wang, 2003) A field guide to Barkskins by a MacArthur Fellow and semi-finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. One of the first to combine ecology and history, the author shows how the shift from Indian to European dominance effected land development in colonial New England.

CHAMPLAIN’S DREAM by David Hackett Fischer (Simon and Schuster, 2008). The biography of the visionary Father of New France by Pulitzer Prize historian/ author of Washington’s Crossing. Master sailor, soldier, cartographer, artist, naturalist, ethnographer, Champlain is best honored for the relationships of mutual respect established with the Indians.

SHADOWS ON THE ROCKby Willa Cather (Vintage Classics, 1931) In contrast with the howling wilderness, Willa Cather’s candlelight tour of late 17th century Quebec, where counts and bishops, apothecaries and traders struggle to shape a new Canadian identity still loyal to French values. The most charming mix of old and new: wooden lambs next to beavers in the Christmas crèche….

Connecting trail: canada's native Writers today

MEDICINE WALK by Richard Wagamese (Millweed Editions 2015) From acclaimed Ojibway writer and journalist, a plain but deeply moving novel about a son’s lonely journey to lay his estranged father to rest, “the warrior way.”

INDIAN HORSE by Richard Wagamese (Douglas & McIntyre, 2012) How an Ojibway‘s love of ice hockey turns his dismal experience at a residential school into one of fulfillment and redemption.

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH: A Curious Account of Native People in North America by Thomas King (Anchor Canada 2013) Combining scholarship and activism, irony and humor, a never-too-heavy but still poignant history of the Indian in North America. A master of “zing,” King separates truth from spin: When governments “admit guilt,” King asks, does that mean "liable"? When they say, “I am sorry” does that mean “responsible?”

Connecting Trail: The Science of Trees

LAB GIRLby Hope Jahren (Knopf 2016): With warmth, humor and passion, this autobiography alternates between the life of a young Fulbright geobiologist—her projects, lab partner, family, dog--and chapter-ettes on the science of trees.

THE HIDDEN LIFE OF TREES by Peter Wohlleben (Greystone, 2016)With 320,000 copies sold world wide, this best-seller by a German forest ranger uses anthropomorphic language to explain the social network of trees—i.e. How branches lean away from each other to share light with their neighbors; how ill trees receive healing sugars through interdependent root systems.

THE FOREST UNSEEN: A YEAR’S WATCH WITH NATURE by David George Haskell (Penguin 2013) A Pulitzer Prize finalist/ biologist/ poet reflects on monthly changes inside a “mandala”—his metaphor for one square meter of old growth forest in Tennessee. The author’s depth of knowledge plus the immediacy of his perceptions turn readers into on-site observers eager to uncover the latest news.

THE MAN WHO PLANTED TREES: A Story of Lost Groves, the Science of Trees and A Plan to Save The Planet by Jim Robbins (Spiegel and Grau/Random House, 2012). Written by a New York Times Science writer about a man who, following a near-death experience, cloned the world’s champion trees—willows, oaks, redwoods--to preserve their DNA in case of environmental catastrophe. Worked into the human story: how the destruction of forests effects human disease, temperatures, flooding, rain fall and pollution plus the latest techniques in “restoration forestry” and “afforestation” (the planting of new sustainable trees where there have never been any).

THE TREES IN MY FOREST by Bernd Heinrich (Ecco/Harper Collins 2003). Winner of the John Burroughs Medal for Natural History Writing and nominee for a National Book Award, this biography of a 300-acre forest in Maine is told from the viewpoint of a property owner/biologist. Touring his woods, various mysteries are explored: i.e. why some white pine trees produce cones while others do not? Or why the bud of an apple blossom blooms pink on the branch but white in a jar? Personal anecdotes, drawings, and quotations keep the pages turning.

WILDWOOD: A Journey Through Trees by Roger Deakin (Free Press 2009). An icon British naturalist travels off the beaten path to uncover man’s spiritual/cultural connection with wood: the soldiers who carved walking sticks in the trenches during World War I; a hunting party for moths in a moonlit forest; a trek to uncover the ancestral roots of the apple in Kyrgyzstan and the bush plum in Australia. Exotic adventures, exquisite prose.

Connecting Trail: Arts & Craft From the Tree

THE GROUP OF SEVEN and Tom Thompson by David P. Silcox (Firefly Books, 2011). How a group of artists in the 1920’s helped Canada imagine itself in urban, domestic and natural settings. Particularly memorable: portraits of wilderness--sometimes logged wasteland, desperate and empty, sometimes explosions of colorand sinuous shapes. The treescape north of the border memorably expressed.

AT HOME IN THE AMERICAN BARN by James B. Garrison (Rizzoli, 2016). Showcasing the current trend for reclaimed wood in architecture, twenty-three renovated barns—Vermont to Pennsylvania—showing how the past can invigorate the present, inside and out.

THE MAN WHO MADE THINGS OUT OF TREES by Robert Penn (W.W. Norton, 2016) The Times, London Book of the Year. A British writer/ journalist/ cyclist explores crafting axe handles, baseball bats, toboggans, desks and more from a 60’ high ash tree from his own woods.

THE SOUL OF A TREE: A WOODWORKER’S REFLECTIONS by George Nakashima (Kodansha, 2011) How an artist-craftsman’s knowledge of grain, proportion, wetting and matching turns a fallen tree into furniture sculpture. Insightful prose and sketches.

EMILIE BRZEZINSKI: THE LURE OF THE FOREST by John Beardsley & Aneta Georgievska-Shine (D.A.P/Distributed Art Publishers, Inc. 2014). The mother of Mika (co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe) and wife of Zbigniew (National Security Advisor in the Carter Administration) who was inspired by minimalism and natural forms to breathe new life into fallen trees. Work includes arches, bowls, benches, abstract sculptures and entire forests of branchless trunks. See also the tree art of DAVID NASH(Introduction by Norbert Lynton, Abrams, 2007).

WOOD by Andy Goldsworthy (Thames and Hudson, 2013). Snow balls, stacked sheets of ice, spires of stone, “thorned” together leaves—each placed in situ with trunks and branches, then photographed by the famous British land artist to capture the interaction of nature and trees.

BARK by Cedric Pollet (Frances Lincoln Limited, 2010). More like abstract paintings than photography, 81 close-ups of bark from around the world, each “camouflage” pattern combining edgy texture and hue--from parrot psychedelic to peregrine browns.

ANSEL ADAMS TREES(Edited by Janet Swan Bush, Little Brown and Company, 2004) Captured by the much honored nature photographer, the moods of trees—orchards dancing; parched stumps, dying; pines reclusive in the mist. No muddled statement--each black and white print rings with the clarity of a crystal bell.

Secondary Path: Children & trees

STRANGE TREES AND THE STORIES BEHIND THEM by Bernadette Pourquie and Cecile Gambini (Princeton Architectural Press, 2016) Using imaginative out-loud language plus whimsical borders, this magical book tells the story of 16 unusual trees from around the world: i.e. the Chocolate tree from South America, the Ghost tree from China, the Sausage Tree from Africa.

PLANTING THE TREES OF KENYA: The Story of Wangari Maathai by Claire A Nivola (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008). Brought up to think not of herself, but the world beyond, Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and Founder of the Green Belt Movement, was a one-woman effort to reverse the destruction of commercial agriculture on local Kenyan life. Her solution: plant seeds and grow trees. Miniature-like illustrations help little people relate to activists early on.

DK EYEWITNESS TREE by David Burnie (DK Penguin/Random House, 2015) For older children, a reference book about the science of trees—their history, how they grow, their body parts, their care and management (including deforestation and conservation). Stunning layout for a wonderfully educational book.

THE GIVING TREE by Shel Silverstein (Harper Collins, 1964) A family read in honor of the tree, which, since the beginning of time, has given selflessly to each and every one of us.

Unexpected vistas...

--Tree Climbing: The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring by Richard Preston (Random House, 2007) is the story of the men who climb three hundred feet up into the lost world of redwood canopies, a labyrinth of huckleberry bushes, hanging gardens of ferns and organisms yet to be named. If you are psyched to DIY, check out the school run by the author’s teacher’s teachers, Peter and Patty Jenkins Tree Climber International in Atlanta (www.treeclimbing.com). Their two-day program for beginners will get you started.

For a climb up a Douglas fir that can include a dinner party or an overnight in a “treeboat/sleeping hammock” 160 feet up, contact Oregon’s Pacific Tree Climbing Institute (www.pacifictreeclimbing.com).

Inspired to build your own treehouse—thatched roof, Gothic windows, bamboo paneled walls-- see BE IN A TREEHOUSE by Pete Nelson (Abrams, 2014) for amazing ideas.

--Arbor Day Foundation: To help create a world with cleaner air and water; reduced climate change, species loss and poverty; and beauty for the human soul, become an activist by planting trees in your community. For more information visit, www.arborday.com.

--Gibbes Museum of Art: Volunteer to help artist Patrick Dougherty weave twigs and branches together to create environmental sculpture at the Gibbes Museum during March 2017. See Patrick Dougherty Installation.

VOL. I By Diana Hambleton

First Couples: The Churchills

The Main trail: A BOOK ABOUT CLEMENTINE…

Winston Churchill, Britain’s most celebrated Prime Minister of the twentieth century, felt his “finest hour” was persuading Clementine Hozier to marry him. Not surprising! According to Sonia Purnell’s new biography about the long overlooked First Lady of Downing Street who inspired and sustained her husband during decades of crises. His sense of destiny, the author maintains, would never have been fulfilled without her...

For Winston and Clemmie, love took hold their first time as dinner partners: he was fascinated by her ethereal beauty: she by the public excitement swirling about him. Smitten, he proposed within months in a garden folly—a mini Greek temple--at Blenheim Palace, his ancestral home. Fifty-seven years, 1700 letters/notes and five children later, the marriage remained the emotional centerpiece of both their lives.

Like Winston, Clemmie was descended from an aristocratic but dysfunctional family. Shy and anxiety ridden—she battled depression throughout her life--she was also intelligent, strong willed and talented. During their marriage she grew from athlete/gallery browser/legendary hostess into her husband’s most trusted political advisor: she clipped newspaper articles, edited speeches, and during wartime, was privy to classified maneuvers. But her real genius was how she managed his genius—its ups and downs. Insisting he temper self-absorption with sensitivity to colleagues and staff, she wrote, “You won’t get the best results by irascibility and rudeness”—a reminder he kept in his desk drawer until he left office. “She boosted but never betrayed…counseled but also challenged, chided as well as consoled,” explains Purnell.

During the Blitz, when England was bombed by the Nazis for 267 days, Clemmie represented the social conscience of the Government: she frequented bombed out neighborhoods, volunteered as a rooftop fire watcher and personally responded to the health and sanitation emergencies of strung out citizens. When, for safety reasons, the women in munitions factories tucked their hair inside turbans, she concocted a similar look with bold colored scarves. With this gesture of solidarity, Clemmie let the world know that British women were “carrying on” with confidence and style.

The story of three Americans—CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow, Lend-Lease Facilitator, W. Averell Harriman and US Ambassador to Britain, John Gilbert Winant,—who persuaded FDR and a reluctant United States to join the fight against Hitler.

The Churchill Centre, founded in 1968 shortly after Churchill death, is the world’s preeminent member organization dedicated to preserving the historic legacy of Sir Winston Churchill. At a time when leadership is challenged at every turn, that legacy looms larger and remains more relevant than ever. To become a member of the Centre, please click here.